Down on Nell Lane with a smelly story ................... the Destructor Plant

Now I remember the Corporation depot on Nell Lane and think we may even have used it once, but its closure and demolition passed me by.

The Destructor Plant in 1925

There will be someone who knows and I hope they get in touch to offer up a date and perhaps a reason.

Like so many bits of our most recent past the closure of the depot pretty much went unreported and the information has yet to arrive in an archive.

In the case of the Nell Lane site that is a shame given that its story goes back to 1892 when the Withington Board of Health decided it needed its own “destructor plant” to deal with the increasing amount of refuse.

As far as the Board was concerned the need was obvious and set out the case at a local government inquiry in 1892.  “The population of the district was 25,000 in 1891, and was now estimated at 27,000. ............. The number of houses was 5,200.  There were the same number of ashpits, and of these 2,284 were dry ashpits.  

The Local Board had to deal with about 15,000 tons of refuse and other matter in the course of the year. 

Part was disposed of to farmers and it had hiterto been the custom to tip the rest.  Objection had been taken to the custom to tipping and the Board had been obliged to give up all the tips but two.”**

Salford Corporation had a decade earlier been forced to do the same. Mr J Swarbrick the consulting engineer of the scavenging department of Salford explained at the inquiry that similiar objections to land tipping had been made and the Council had recourse to building a destructor in 1881, which was all to the good as early evidence had suggested that tipped land when disturbed gave off awful smells and was unsuitable for building on.***

The original plans for the site included placing the destructor’s furnaces ten feet below the surface of the ground and surrounding the area with an eight foot high wall.

The destructor had been opposed by the Chorlton Union who expressed their concerns for the health of the inmates of the nearby Withington Workhouse.

But the plant was built and in 1912 Manchester Corporation who had taken over the destructor reported that it accounted for 12,320 tons of refuse, some which was sold on to farmers, and 365 tons burned in the destructor.

And that is it the first smelly story on the blog.

Location; Nell Lane, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester

Picture; Aerial Views, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester Corporation Destruction Works, Nell Lane, 1925, Imperial Aerial Photo Com72045, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass


*The Withington Board of Health and later the Withington Urban District Council was the local government body responsible for Burnage, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Withington and Disbury.  The latter ceased to exist when the rate payers of the four areas voted to join Manchester in 1904

**Proposed Refuse Destructor at Withington, Manchester Guardian, November 23 1893

*** Proposed Refuse Destructor at Withington, Manchester Guardian, February 16 1892

Back again in Bottoms of Stretford Park

We are back in Bottoms of Stretford Park.

It is a field name which could have come straight off one of those saucy seaside postcards, but it’s real enough.  And as I said yesterday made perfect sense given that it bordered Stretford Park.

Now some of you will spot that the photograph cropped up just a few weeks ago when I was writing about the Rough Leech Gutter* and those with powerful memories that I used it much earlier in the year but I think it is worth another look.

Away past the bridge to the left of the houses is what is now Chorlton Park, while just over the brook and is Hough End Hall which like our field was actually in Withington.

It is impossible to know for certain but I suspect that the horses we can see come from Hough End Hall, although it is equally possible that they belonged to Park Brow Farm which was a little further to our right where Sandy Lane joins Nell Lane.

I rather think we are sometime in the early 20th century.  By the late 1920s, the Park had been laid out, Nell Lane widened and the old low bridge replaced by a new one.

What I like about the picture and why I am drawn back to it is because it captures for me that rural past which was Chorlton and would soon be no more.

It is getting to late afternoon and the horses have been brought out after a day in the fields.  There are still plenty of small ponds which were a feature of the township and can be seen in all the old maps.

But soon the last of these will be drained, and the lazy little streams buried in brick culverts leaving just a few old water filled brick pits up by Oswald Road. And it is doubtful that the group of boys who have gathered to watch are from farming families.  Most if not all will be from that row of houses we can see or from the smaller ones directly behind and their parents will clerks, shop keepers, warehouseman and perhaps a few professionals.

All of which points to the way the township was going.  So dear reader gaze on this photograph of Bottoms of Stretford Park and reflect soon enough it would become something different.

* http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/of-lost-streams-half-forgotten-films.html

Picture; from the Lloyd collection

Standing in Bottoms of Stretford Park

Yesterday I was on Egerton Road sometime around the beginning of the 20th century, and today I have moved east to the edge of the township.

We are standing in Withington and looking back on to Nell Lane.  Just behind us to our left is Hough End Hall and I think we are again sometime at the beginning of the last century.

The area directly in front had only been developed as housing in the last twenty years.  Before that date this was First Moorfields which along with Second and Third Moorfields was arable land running west alongside the Brook up towards Lime Bank.

Back in the 1840s and 50s these fields were farmed by Charles Renshaw whose other land was dotted about across the township which was pretty much the pattern in Chorlton.  He lived with his brother, Alice Hancok a domestic servants and James Hulse a farm servant In Martledge just opposite where the modern Nicolas Road joins Manchester Road.

Now for those who like me delight in even more obscure knowledge, we are standing in Bottoms of Stretford Park which even I don’t think I could better as a place name.  But the name makes perfect sense because the land to the north which runs beside the modern St Werburghs Road up towards the tram line was Stretford Park farmed by Henry Jackson who lived in Hough End Hall.

And indulging myself even more, the edge of the pond you can see in our photograph and which features on others taken at much the same time was one of a three which fed into my old friend the Rough Leech Gutter.

But Rough Leech Gutter is a topic I have already done and Lime Bank is for another time.

Picture; from the Lloyd collection